How strong is your will power? How long can you resist temptation? What is your greatest weakness? Can you resist eating your favorite food? Can you resist adding one more tool to your tool chest? Can you resist buying a new dress? What is your favorite sin?
Temptation overcomes all of us. We all have a weakness for something. It may be a favorite food or drink, buying something for a grandchild, or buying something for us. We may resist for a while but eventually we cave into the craving. The temptation wins.
We like to point our finger at someone else when they give in to their temptation. We especially like to ask why Adam and Eve gave in to the temptation to eat the forbidden fruit. They are an easy target. We blame them for all the sin that came afterward. But how many of us could resist our favorite food…and for how long? Could we hold out forever?
Satan knows our weaknesses. He looks for opportunities to tempt us with them. He will dangle them in front of us until we succumb to the temptation. Then comes the guilt and Satan celebrates and laughs at us. We commit to doing better. We avoid the temptation for a while. But we know in the back of our minds that we will struggle with it again.
What are we to do? Our only hope is to turn to Jesus. He became the perfect Lamb of God to bring us back into a right relationship with God. Without Jesus, we are lost. With Jesus, we are overcomers. Jesus has defeated Satan and we can participate in that victory. We can celebrate that victory. It is by turning our lives over to Him that we can resist temptation.
I pray we all know recognize our weakness. I pray we ask Jesus to help us overcome it. I pray each one of us will turn our lives over to Jesus fully and join in His victory over Satan. Recognize your weakness. Overcome it with Jesus. Commit fully to Jesus. Celebrate the victory in Jesus.
Genesis 2:16-17 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.”
Marty Pressey 